This invention relates to a gas-liquid contact apparatus which involves heat movement or material movement between a gas and a liquid in a distilling column, an absorption tower, and so forth.
A plate column type gas-liquid contact apparatus has been used mostly in the past for a distilling column or an absorption tower, and the inventors of the present invention, too, have made various improvements and proposals for this kind of apparatuses (refer to Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 49-45131 and 46-31321).
The former is so constituted as to increase the contact by disposing partitions inside a caplike gas-liquid contact structure member. Though this apparatus exhibits excellent effects when a processing quantity is relatively small or when a processing quantity is stable, the flow of the gas is disturbed and an operation under a stable state cannot be made when the processing quantity increases.
The latter is constituted in such a manner as to blow off a liquid flowing down from a tray and to separate the gas and the liquid from a gas-liquid multi-phase flow by a cap consisting of a cylinder having a large number of pores and a ceiling plate. In this apparatus, however, the gas and the liquid are separated only when the gas-liquid multiphase flow is jetted from a porous member at the side portion of the cap. Therefore, the gas-liquid separation becomes more difficult with the increase of a load. Furthermore, an excellent gas-liquid contact cannot be expected due to so-called "entrainment" in which the ascending gas flow is accompanied by a large number of droplets.
On the other hand, a plate column type mist catcher has been proposed as an apparatus for the gas-liquid separation (Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. 52-149265). In this apparatus, a cap having a cover but not a bottom is disposed at an open portion of a column plate, the side portion of this cap is bored, a guide blade is disposed outside this open hole and a liquid pocket is formed at the tip of the guide blade. A gas containing a mist is caused to impinge against this liquid pocket to separate the mist, and the separated liquid is guided to a tray at a lower portion.
This apparatus exhibits an excellent effect when a gas-liquid separation at a constant flow rate is made but when the flow rate of the gas-liquid changes, entrainment becomes more vigorous, and the gas-liquid separation cannot be made accurately. In particular, there is the problem that the gas flowing down along the guide blade disturbs the liquid surface on the tray and increase entrainment.